Month: January 1999

Animals often lose their natural habitat when rural areas are
developed. But sometimes those new developments can provide them with
even better access to food and shelter…and that can cause populations
to explode. In Canada’s Banff National Forest, the problem is elk. One
of their favorite hang-outs is the golf course, where they eat
everything in sight, and leave behind mounds of dung… so the town put
together an elk advisory board to study the problem, and now they may
have found an innovative solution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Wendy Nelson reports:

The timber industry specially breeds trees to increase their value.
Trees are worth more when they grow straight, tall and fast. Inbreeding
trees within the same family can increase the frequency of these traits,
but now a new study shows it can also be fatal. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Todd Witter has more:

22 States, including all the Great Lakes States except Minnesota, have
been ordered by the federal EPA to slash their nitrogen oxide
pollution. Some of the states are suing to block the order, but Ohio is
going one step further – – it is IGNORING the order. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:

This month (January), the Canadian Government ruled that Canadian Dairy
Farmers will not be allowed to use the R-B-S-T growth hormone on their
cows. The hormone increases milk production by 15%. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Officials at Monsanto were upset earlier this month (January) when the
Canadian government failed to approve its bovine growth hormone,
R-B-S-T, for use in Canada. As Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator
Suzanne Elston discovered, the decision wasn’t based on any negative
human health impacts:

Great Lake’s residents are settling in for a long dark winter’s night.
But a north country tradition celebrating the fact that the days are
getting longer is helping some people get through the season with some
humor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson covered the
annual business meeting of the “Hump Day Club”:

The Mississippi River is changing. Some fish and wildlife that once
lived in or around the river are gone and other plants and animals are
moving in. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports
researchers are finding that the flood of 1993 has accelerated those
changes:

1998 was a record-setting year for foreign shipping on the Great Lakes.
And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports, the
shipping boom meant an unexpected increase in port jobs and grain trade
for Midwestern farmers: